


law-evading kid etiquette

by orphan_account



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mild Hurt/Comfort, No Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 03:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10070228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It's tiring to be eleven years old.





	

Saihara’s tired, too tired to play games or fight with anyone today. It feels like tired is  _ all  _ he is these days, but maybe that’s for the better because he’d honestly rather not fight with anyone and when he’s tired there’s a sort of film that goes through his head and he can just close his eyes and ignore the fighting. Ouma calls it silly sometimes, how he fades away from reality for just a bit too long but what does Ouma know, anyway? 

He’s only, like, eleven years old after all, but Saihara is too so _whatever._

“Saihara-chan!” The boy hums, and the late afternoon sun beats heavy on his eyelids. Saihara groans and cracks them open, just a tiny bit, and sees Ouma’s face draped over his.

“Not  _ now,  _ Ouma-kun…”

“I’m  _ bored!”  _ Ouma sticks his legs out from under him, lip jutting out in childish disapproval. “I wanna hang out with Saihara-chan!”

“Well, Saihara-chan wants to sleep.” 

Ouma sticks out his tongue. “Fuck you.”

_ “Language.”  _ Saihara hisses. “Be careful, you don’t want the adults to hear you.” 

“And why should you care? Saihara-chan won’t get in trouble if  _ I  _ get caught swearing.” Ouma sits up straighter. “Fuck you. Fuck you!  _ Fuck you!” _

Saihara winces. “Could you maybe chill?”

“How about maybe  _ you  _ chill?” Ouma retorts, and once again, Saihara finds himself too tired to react. Like little weights, his eyelids droop once again, and Ouma doesn’t seem to be interested in trying to wake up again. In fact, he begins to walk away from Saihara. That’s good. Maybe he’s finally learned his lesson.

The sliding door opens, he can tell from the sound it makes all the way from where he sits on the lawn bench. It’s cracked (thanks to yet another one of Ouma’s panicked kicks when the adults had yet to realize that he didn’t like being touched, but they didn’t talk about that) like a spiderweb, and sometimes when he can’t sleep at night, Saihara walks downstairs and watches the way the moonlight reflects on the cracks. On even more ‘sometimes’, he traces his fingers on the cracks and ends up nicking his finger and needs to get a bandaid from one of those  _ really  _ high shelves.

It’s not night right now, but Saihara opens his eyes anyway to look at the crack. From the other side of the door, Ouma waves cheekily and locks it in plain view, effectively keeping Saihara locked outside.

Panicked, Saihara stands up, tripping over his own feet and walking over to the door. “Ouma-kun!” He demands. “Let me in right now!”

“Nope!” The boy hums. “Why should I? Saihara-chan didn’t wanna play with me, after all, so why should I do what he wants?”

Frustrated, Saihara bites his lip and runs his fingers through tousled hair. He needs to be patient with Ouma, but why can’t he be patient and both upset with the boy, if he wants? He just doesn’t need to show off the fact that he’s upset, that’s all.

“Open the door, Ouma-kun.”

“Eeeeh, I think I won’t--”

There’s the sound of the door opening from the other end of the house, and as a ‘We’re home!’ rings clearly throughout the air, Ouma’s eyes widen and he hurriedly unlocks the door and scurries away. Saihara opens the door and steps inside, kicking off his shoes as he tries to chase after Ouma.

“Oh, Saihara-kun! Ouma-kun! Are you two playing together?” One of the adults says, and Saihara gives them a nod of affirmation as Ouma’s feet pound on the stairs frantically.

“Yeah. We’re playing tag.” He elaborates, and follows Ouma, deciding to go just a couple steps slower. He doesn’t need to rush, after all, because he knows where Ouma’s going.

He passes a slightly stunned Miu on the way down the hall, and she blinks at him. “Hey, did something happen?” She hums, hands placed behind her head as she imitates the cool ‘rough and tumble’ protagonist they saw on television last week. “Ouma was running  _ super fast!  _ Faster than usual!”

“...have you seen him run before?” Saihara thinks that Ouma is far too lazy to want to run.

Iruma snickers. “Yeah, Harumaki-chan chases him a lot. It’s kinda funny! He’s always laughing when that happens though, but he wasn’t laughing now, which  _ I  _ think is even funnier, in a sense. Did you yell at him?” She claps her hands together. “The adults told us not to yell at each other, though! I don’t really understand why. Adults are always yelling, so why aren’t kids allowed to yell, too? I mean, these adults don’t really yell all that much, but, nonetheless.”

A pause. Saihara shifts awkwardly. He has never been good with talking to Iruma.

“...alright, thank you, I guess.”

The girl gives him a cheeky thumbs up before going down the stairs Saihara had just come up from, and Saihara makes his way over to Ouma’s room.

Technically, it’s also  _ Saihara’s  _ room, and Rantarou’s and Kiibo’s as well, but Ouma is the one who took purple construction paper and decorated the entire room with stars and shapes and signs for each of their beds (“creepy mystery kid”, “emotionless robot kid”, “emo snoopy kid”, and “supreme leader kid” - it wasn’t hard to tell which signs belonged to whom) so it eventually grew to be the room where ‘Ouma resided and there were others there as well’. An awkward name that was too much of a mouthful, but it was a home that Saihara knew.

Ouma himself is sitting in his bed, knees curled up to his chest as he grins with his stock photo grin. “Uwaah, you caught me again, Saihara-chan!” He hums. “I can never escape you, can I?”

“I’m not sure if that was really something that could be considered ‘caught’, or whatever…” Saihara sits next to Ouma, and the bed creaks. The smaller boy draws circles in the palm of one hand with the finger of his other, grin standing stock still, and Saihara can’t help but just keep watching.

“Are you gonna tell on me?” Ouma says it in a voice that is a bit too high for an eleven year old, and Saihara wonders why Ouma doesn’t seem to understand a world where there aren’t angry grownups in it. Saihara swallows and rubs his wrists, and Ouma stares and stares and stares.

“...no.” He says finally, and it makes him uncomfortable how Ouma visibly relaxes at the statement. “You weren’t serious, after all. It was a joke, a lie. You always joke and lie. You wouldn’t lock me outside forever, and even if you did, someone else would let me back in. I don’t care.”

“Mmm!” Ouma goes back to tracing circles in the palm of his hand. “You’re absolutely right, Saihara-chan!”

Saihara bites the inside of his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments and kudos if you enjoyed!


End file.
